Call centers are widely used to provide services to customers and other callers. Due to improvements in the telephone, telecommunications, and networking arts, a call center can typically be located anywhere in the world and operate around the clock. The term call center shall be taken herein to include centers which receive contact via telephone as well as via newer technologies including, but not limited to e-mail, live assistance, text chat, or any other contact methods known in the art and combinations thereof. Call centers using such newer technologies are sometimes also referred to as contact centers. Some examples of call center services include help desk support for workstation and software users, product information, customer service before and after a sale, and billing inquiries. Many other examples are in use today and more can be expected in the future. The example may relate to a product or service offered by the call center provider or by another company.
Operating a call center represents a significant cost to the providing company, and is therefore the subject of intense cost reduction activities by the providing company in order to have a business advantage over competing companies. For example, the call center may be located in a remote geographical area in order to reduce labor, benefits, and overhead costs.
Improving the productivity of call centers is also receiving great attention by the companies which operate them. For example, Pattison et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 5,946,375 describes monitoring the performance of service agents in handling customer calls by call center supervisors. Ravenscroft et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 6,466,663 describes further developments in monitoring the phone activity of the agents. U.S. Patent Application U.S. 2003/0123640 A1 by Roelle et al. describes systems for collecting, analyzing and representing data generated by a call center. Various measures are determined and compliance to the measures is indicated allowing effective evaluation of call center performance.
Despite the aforementioned and other cost reduction activities and performance improvement efforts, there remains considerable incentive for further improvements due to the high dollar value of expenditures by companies for operation of call centers. In addition, customer satisfaction with the handling of their calls needs to be improved, while reducing the cost of call center operation. One source of low satisfaction levels is due to multiple handoffs or transfers in resolving the customer request, many times resulting in a callback because the request was not fully answered in the first series of transfers.
Applicants have determined that there is a direct correlation between improved customer satisfaction and a reduction in handoffs. For example, a company may experience a 10-20% decline in customer satisfaction due to a first telephone transfer of a customer making a request. A second transfer increases this to a 20-30% decline.
Furthermore call center agents will typically spend less total time in handling a request that is resolved on a first access, when the time required to handle handoffs and callbacks is included.
It is believed that a system which reduces handoff while also reducing call center costs would constitute a significant advancement in the art.